“No plumbing then,” I said. The Reckoner hideout in Babilar had had a septic tank, which was a nice luxury.
“The rich have electricity,” Abraham said. “The city trades food for power cells.”
Megan strolled up, one hand shading her eyes as she looked at the city. “You sure this plan of yours will get us in, Abraham?”
“Oh, certainly,” Abraham said. “Getting into Ildithia is never a problem.”
We piled into the jeeps again, then did a careful loop around the city, keeping our distance just in case. We finally ditched our jeeps in an old farmhouse, fully aware that they might not be there when we returned, fancy Reckoner locks or not. We also swapped our clothing for battered jeans, dusty coats, and backpacks with old water bottles at the sides. When we set out, we hopefully looked like a group of loners working to survive on their own.
The following hike left me missing the bumpy ride of the jeep. As we drew close to the leading edge of Ildithia, we walked among more of those fields—things I’d read about, heard about, but never seen before today.
There was more connectivity between city-states in the Fractured States than I’d once assumed. Perhaps the Epics could have survived without any kind of infrastructure, but they tended to want subjects to rule. What good was it to be an all-powerful force of destruction and fury if you didn’t have peasants to murder now and then? Unfortunately peasants had to eat, or they’d go and die before you got a chance to murder them.
That meant building up some kind of structure in your city, finding some kind of product you could trade. Cities that could produce a surplus of food could trade for power cells, weapons, or luxuries. I found that satisfying. When they’d first appeared, the Epics had wantonly destroyed anything and everything, ruining the national infrastructure. Now they were forced to bring it all back, becoming administrators.
Life was so unfair. You couldn’t both destroy everything around you and live like a king.
Hence the fields. The ones I’d noticed alongside the city’s path had already been harvested, but these cornfields were ripe and ready. People worked them in large numbers, and though it was early spring, they were already harvesting.
“Stormwind again?” I whispered to Abraham, who hiked beside me.
“Yes,” he said. “Her rains cause hyperquick growth around the city; they can get a new crop every ten days. Periodically, the people travel with her a few days in advance of the city’s path and plant, then she waters. Workers travel ahead and manage the fields, then rejoin the city when it passes them. Oh, and you might want to keep your head down.”
I lowered my eyes, adopting the old familiar posture—with flat expression—of one who lived under Epic rule. Abraham had to nudge Megan as she defiantly met the eyes of a guard we passed, a woman with a rifle on her shoulder and a sneer on her lips.
“Move on to the city,” the woman said, pointing her gun toward Ildithia. “You touch an ear of corn without permission and we’ll shoot you. You want food, talk to the overseers.”
As we drew closer to the city, we picked up an escort of men with cudgels on their belts. I felt uncomfortable beneath their gaze but kept my eyes down, which let me inspect the transition into the city. First there was a little crust on the ground. It got thicker as we drew closer, crunching underfoot and breaking, until finally we stepped onto true saltstone.
Closer in, we passed lumps that indicated where buildings were starting to grow. The white-grey of the salt here was woven with dozens of different strata, ribbons of color, like frozen smoke. The stone had a texture to it I could see, and it made me want to rub my fingers on the rock and feel it.
The place smelled strange. Salty, I guess. And dry. The fields had been humid, so it was noticeable how dry the air was here right inside the city. We joined a short line of people waiting to enter the city proper, where the buildings were the correct size.
There was also a familiarity to the sight: the uniform texture and tone, even with the variations in color, reminded me of the steel of Newcago. This place was probably alien to everyone else, with everything grown out of solid salt, but to me that was normal. It felt like coming home. Another irony. To me, comfort was intrinsically tied to something the Epics had created.
We were given an orientation; the person who spoke to us was surprised that we weren’t refugees from Kansas City, but he kept his speech quick and direct. The food belonged to Larcener. If you wanted some, you worked for it. The city wasn’t policed, so he said we’d probably want to join one of the established communities, if we could find one that was taking new members. Epics could do what they wanted, so stay out of their way.
It seemed to lack Newcago’s structure. There, Steelheart had established a defined upper crust of non-Epics, and had used a powerful police force to keep people in line. In turn though, in Newcago we’d had access to electricity, mobiles, even movies.
That bothered me. I didn’t want to discover that Steelheart had been a more effective leader than others, though part of me had known it for a long time. Heck, Megan had told me as much when I’d first joined the team.
Orientation done, we subjected ourselves to being searched—Abraham had warned us of this, so Megan was prepared to use her powers in a very careful illusion on several bags. That disguised some tools, like our power cells and advanced weapons, as more mundane items. She left a nice handgun as a plant, undisguised, for the guards to “confiscate” for themselves, a kind of toll for getting into the city. They let us have our more mundane weapons though, as Abraham had said they would. Weapons weren’t illegal in the city.
After the search wrapped up, we were cleared. The guy from before, who’d given us our orientation, pointed. “You can take any building that’s not occupied. But if I were you, I’d keep my head down these next few weeks.”
“Why?” I asked, slinging my pack over my shoulder.
He eyed me. “Trouble between Epics. Nothing we can bother ourselves with, other than to lie low. Might be less food to be had in coming days.” He shook his head, then pointed toward a stack of crates sitting outside the border. “I tell you what,” he said to us and a few other newcomers. “I lost my work crew this morning. Sparking morons ran off. You help me cart those crates in, and I’ll give you a full day’s grain requisition, as if you’d started in the morning.”
I looked to the others, who shrugged. If we’d actually been the loners we pretended to be, there was little chance we’d have passed up such an opportunity. Within minutes, we were hauling crates. The wooden containers were stamped with the burned-in mark of UTC, a group of nomadic traders ruled by Terms, an Epic with time manipulation powers. Looked like I’d missed her visit, unfortunately. I’d always wanted to see her in person.
The work was hard, but it did give me a chance to see some of the city. Ildithia was well populated; even with a large number of people manning the fields, the streets were busy. No cars, except the ones on the sides of the road that were made of salt, leftovers from when the city had originally been transformed. Apparently when the city regrew each week, it also reproduced things like these cars. None of them worked of course. Instead, there were a striking number of bicyclists.
Laundry was draped on lines outside windows. Children played with plastic cars alongside one road, their knees covered in salt that had rubbed off the ground. People carried goods purchased from a market that, after a few trips, I managed to pinpoint on a street one over from our path—which ran between the outer edge of the city and a warehouse about a half hour inside.
As I traipsed back and forth with box after box, I was able to get a good feel for how the buildings grew. Right inside the border, bulges formed into the knobs of weathered-looking foundations, like stones that had stood for centuries in the wind. Beyond those, the buildings had begun to fully take shape, walls stretching upward, brickwork emerging. It was like erosion in reverse.
The process wasn’t perfect. Occasionally we would pass unformed lumps on the groun
d or between buildings, like cancerous growths of salt. I asked one of the other people lugging boxes about it, and he shrugged and told me that each week there were some irregularities. They’d be gone the next time the city cycled through, but others would have grown.
I found it all fascinating. I lingered for a long moment before what seemed like it would become a row of apartments formed out of a black-blue salt with a swirling pattern. I could almost see the buildings rising, ever so slowly, like…popsicles getting un-licked.
There were trees too—that was a difference from Newcago, where nothing organic had transformed. These grew up like the buildings, crafted delicately from salt. They were only stumps here, but farther in they were full-blown trees.
“Don’t stare too long, newbie,” a woman said, hiking past and dusting off her gloved hands. “That’s Inkom territory.” She was one of the workers from the field, recruited to haul with us.
“Inkom?” I asked, catching up and nodding to Abraham as he passed, carting another box.
“That neighborhood,” the tall woman said. “Closed doors—they don’t take new members. They’re up for degrade on the trailing edge, and usually move into that apartment set until their homes reconstitute. After Inkom moves out, Barchin tends to move in, and you don’t want to try to deal with them. Nasty bunch. They’ll let anyone join, but they’ll take half your rations, and only to let you sleep in a gutter between two buildings until you’ve been with them for a year.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said, looking over my shoulder at the lumpish buildings. “But this place is big—looks like there’s lots of empty space. Why would we want to join a family anyway?”
“Protection,” the woman said. “Sure, you can set up in an empty home—there are lots of those—but without a good family at your back, you’re likely to get robbed blind, or worse.”
“Rough,” I said, shivering. “Anything else I should know? Isn’t there a new Epic to worry about?”
“Limelight?” she said. “Yeah, I’d stay out of his way. Any Epic’s way, even more than usual. Limelight is mostly in charge now, but there are a few holdouts. Stormwind. Larcener. War is brewing. Either way, Epics like the skyrises, so stay away from downtown. Right now, the downtown is about five.”
“…Five?”
“Five days since it grew,” she said. “Two more days until the skyscrapers degrade. Usually the roughest time of the week is when that happens. When the taller buildings downtown start to go, the Epics get annoyed and go looking for entertainment. Some move to midtown. Others prowl about. A day or so after, their suites will have regrown and their servants will have moved everything, and it’s generally safe to emerge. Don’t know how the power struggle is going to change all this though.”
We reached the stack of crates at the edge of the city, and I grabbed one off the pile. I still carried my pack on my back—I wasn’t going to separate from it, even if it increased my load each trip. Were there other questions I could ask this woman?
“You and your friends are good workers,” the woman noted, getting a crate of her own. “We might be able to give you a place in my neighborhood. Can’t speak for certain, that’s Doug’s call. But we’re fair, only take a quarter of your rations—use it to feed the elderly and the sick.”
“That sounds tempting,” I said, though it wasn’t at all. We would be making our own safehouse somewhere in the city. “How do I go about applying?”
“You don’t,” she said. “Just show up at this edge in the morning and do some hard work. We’ll be watching. Don’t come looking for us, or things will go poorly for you.”
She hefted her box and strode off. I adjusted my own box, watching her, noting the outline of what was most likely a handgun hidden in the crook of her back, beneath her jacket.
“Tough city,” Mizzy mumbled, grabbing a box and passing me.
“Yeah,” I said. But then again it wasn’t.
I lifted my box to my shoulder and hiked off down the road. I had been young when this had all started, only eight, an orphan on the streets. I’d lived a year on my own before I’d been taken in. I remembered hushed conversations among adults about the breakdown of society projecting horrible things like cannibalism and gangs burning whatever they could find, families breaking apart—every man living for himself.
That hadn’t transpired. People are people. Whatever happens, they make communities, struggle for normalcy. Even with the Epics, most of us simply wanted to live our lives. The woman’s words had been harsh, but also hopeful. If you worked hard, you could find a place in this world despite the insanity. It was encouraging.
I smiled. Right about then, I realized that the street was empty. I stopped, frowning. The kids were gone. No bicycles on the road. Curtains drawn. I turned to catch a few other workers ducking for buildings nearby. The woman I’d talked to passed me in a rush, her crate dropped somewhere.
“Epic,” she hissed. She rushed to an open doorway in what had once been a storefront, following a couple other people inside.
I dumped my crate in a hurry and followed, pushing through the cloth draping the doorway and joining her and a family huddled in the dim light. One man who’d entered before us took out a handgun and looked over the two of us warily, but didn’t point the weapon at us. The implication seemed clear: we could stay until the Epic passed.
The draping in the doorway flapped softly. They probably had as much trouble with doors here as we did in Newcago. I’m sure a door made of salt was hard to use, so they knocked it off and used this cloth as a replacement. Not terribly secure—but then, that was why you had guns.
The front window of the store was made of thinner salt, almost like a glass window, though too cloudy to make out details through. It gave the room some light, and I could see a shadow pass on the other side. A single figure, trailed by something glowing, in the shape of a sphere.
Green light. Of a shade I recognized.
Oh no, I thought.
I had to look. I couldn’t help it. The others hissed at me as I moved to the doorway and peeked past the rippling cloth at the street outside.
It was Prof.
I used to think that I could pick out Epics by sight. The fact that I spent weeks in the Reckoners alongside not one but two hidden Epics proved me wrong on that count.
That said, there is a look about an Epic who is in the throes of their power. The way they stand so tall, the way they smile with such confidence. They stand out, like a burp during a prayer.
Prof appeared much as he had when I’d last seen him, clad in a black lab coat, hands glowing faintly green. He had a head of greying hair that one wouldn’t expect to be paired with such a powerful physique. Prof was sturdy. Like a stone wall, or a bulldozer. You’d never call this man elegant, but you would absolutely not want to try to cut in front of him in line.
He strode down the white and grey street, a spherical forcefield trailing him with a person trapped inside. Long, dark hair obscured her face, but she wore a traditional Chinese dress. It was Stormwind, the Epic who brought the rains and caused crops to grow at hyperaccelerated rates. The woman I’d talked to earlier said she’d been holding out against Prof’s rule.
Looked like that had changed. Prof stopped outside the shop I was in, then turned, looking toward the windows of the buildings along the street. I ducked back inside, heart thumping. He seemed to be searching for something.
Sparks! What to do? Run? My rifle was in my pack, disassembled, but I had a handgun stuffed into my belt, under my shirt. The guards outside had let that pass as Abraham had said they would. They apparently didn’t care if people inside were armed. They seemed to expect it.
Well, guns wouldn’t do much against Prof. He was a High Epic with two prime invincibilities. Not only would his forcefields protect him from damage, but if he did get hurt, he would heal.
I slipped the handgun from my belt anyway. The other people in the room huddled together, staying quiet. If there was another way out, th
ey’d probably have taken it—though that wasn’t a hundred percent given. Many people hid from Epics instead of running. They figured the only way to cope was to hunker down and wait it out.
I peeked through the doorway again, my heart thundering. Prof hadn’t moved, but he had turned from our building, inspecting one across the street instead. I hurriedly wiped the sweat from my forehead before it could trickle into my eyes, then pulled my earpiece out of my pocket and fitted it in.
“Has anyone seen David?” Cody was saying.
“I passed him on the last round,” Abraham said. “He should be near the warehouse, I think. Far away from Prof.”
“Yeah, about that,” I whispered.
“David!” Megan’s voice. “Where are you? Get under cover. Prof is moving down the street.”
“I can see that,” I said. “He seems to be looking for something. What are everyone’s positions?”
“I’ve got a spot with a good view,” Cody said, “ ’bout fifty yards from the target, second story of a building with an open window. Have my sights on him now.”
“Megan grabbed me,” Abraham said, “and towed me around a corner. We’re a street over to the east, watching Cody’s feed on our mobiles.”
“Hold your positions,” I whispered. “Mizzy?”
“Haven’t heard from her,” Abraham answered.
“I’m here,” Mizzy said, sounding breathless. “Maaan, I just about stepped on him, guys.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Ran away, perpendicular to our street. I’m at a market or something. Everyone’s hiding, but it’s packed here.”
“Stay in position,” I whispered, “and tap into Cody’s feed. This might not be related to us. He’s obviously making a show of having captured Stormwind, and…Sparks.”